Poetry and Experience

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961. Hardcover. 8vo. Grey cloth with gilt lettering, dust jacket. 204pp. Fine/very good. Jacket complete and attractive if a bit rubbed and edgeworn, with chip at spine head. A quite handsome first edition of the prolific poet's "matured and considered statement of what poetry is." Choice autograph addition, this copy being extra-illustrated with an Autograph Note Signed from MacLeish facing the title page -- a unique frontispiece! 1p, 5½" X 8¼", Antigua, West Indies, 20 January 1974. Addressed to Arnold F. Gates (1914-93, noted Lincoln/Civil War scholar). Near fine. On "Mill Reef Club" letterhead, the poet thanks the scholar for a note that "made its way to the Caribbean" and agrees to inscribe some books "when I get back to Conway (Massachusetts)...." Boldly penned in blue ballpoint. As if being a prolific poet, playwright and writer weren't enough -- winning Pulitzer Prizes in 1933, 1952 and 1958 along the way, as well as a National Book Award and numerous others -- this man of letters (1892-1982) was appointed Librarian of Congress in 1939, and despite his lacking a library science degree he reorganized and revolutionized that unwieldy behemoth before departing in 1944; oh yes, he also squeezed in a career as an attorney and as writing professor at Harvard.